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10/11/2010

Vantage Points

Traversee, Munich

“There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect.”
(Michel Foucault)

The title of the exhibition refers to the american/mexican political thriller Vantage Point (2008), in which an assassination attempt on the American President is seen from eight different perspectives.

It is not the topical background of this movie and of the individual works of the exhibition that provide a shared reference, rather the procedure and methodic approach towards the subject displays the connecting element. At least from the understanding of the view in the round of Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women (about 1583) on, art history comprises the influence of perspective to a broader interpretation – the exhibition vantage points intends to focus on and force this approach.

As well as in the associated movie, an often irritating shifting point of view and a combined generated change of the interpretation is seen also in the works of the five exhibiting artists. With a shift in focus, a first interpretation of the works is partially not just amplified, but clashed by another. The challenging of a stable or static point of view and the addition of alternative focuses develop the ground for an individual enhancement of the meaning of works by one’s own interpretation.

Ulf Aminde (*1969, Stuttgart) often chooses people in extreme life situations as protagonists in his video and photo works. Their own positioning in society and their perspective in the arts usually play a role in the periphery. Aminde however does not overtake the distant function of an auctorial artist like Duane Hanson, with his canonical, hyperreal sculpture of a heroin addict, but participates and observes simultaneously. Real, documentary as well as fictive provoked associations and situations compose a blurry picture of opposite addictions. Therefore, he creates a system of different provisory variables and the comprehension of the impossibility of a constant positioning. Amindes tableaux of “field researches” position themselves as an initial and never ending project- as an ever branching system of elements and variations, which core stays undecided and with it handling the question of subjectivity.

Mike Bourscheid (*1984, Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg) pursues the shift of angle purely formal in the usage of two different media and their description of the same place, which is a caravan on a mowed lawn of a forest property situated near a blurry lake. The panorama like photography of the specific location complements Bourscheid in his super-8-film piece in a closeup view of the caravan and visualized time: The sun mirrored in the back window moves to an angle, where the light overtakes the picture frame and finally the view of the observer. The juxtaposition and equality of independent reference begins with the petty bourgeois contrasting the (only seemingly) free bohemian arts, and moves towards evoking the theory of the sublime (C.D. Friedrich, Schiller, etc.), that according to the observer gets thrown back with the help of the art piece. It refers as well to the art historical subject of the human intruding into nature (cf. Impressionism) and to the impact of the media on our picture memory.

Here as well the angle encloses the meaning - how far would the interpreted spectrum with another addition exponentiate? Or would a constriction of the interpreted point of view follow?

The protagonists seen on the photos of the series In order of appearance by Johannes Kullen (*1981, Berlin) imitate different, already iconic poses from fashion, advertising and art history and expand the existing gestural and mimical repertoire about their subjective display and interpretation. With staging and re-staging the dialectic relationship of documented and staged levels in photography is questioned. The display of the own individuality and the recourse onto social codes go on parallel, and are connected within the works. The represented character of the portrait is evenly infiltrated by the permanently (over-)contextualization and typology. With this, a plural point of view is constructed and the branching of references creates an overlapping “network” of interpreting levels.

Cyrill Lachauer (* 1979, Rosenheim) implicates in his works a shift in context and allows new, unspoiled points of views onto the traditional, unreflected association with cultural concepts and the negotiation with nature. The antithetic poles of a surface similar object like desire and disappointment, triumph and failure, planning and collapse are placed opposite in a porous print of the Matterhorn with a video documentation of climbing a mountain and lighting colored signal smoke. Lachauer stages cartographic level colors, that divide nature as a concept, with his individual reinterpretation as an artistic draft and with it liberates the resulting contextualisation of mental processes.

The reversing of the point of view becomes clear with the diptych Ein kritischer Augenblick am Totenkirchl liest man aus unseren Gesichtern: Lachauer mirrors a photograph of his own grandfather, where original and reproduction, visualized by the opposing viewing direction, contradict and finally compensate each other.

The works by Daniel Lergon (*1978 Bonn) are stirred by questioning the interaction of surface and penetrating light. The meaning of coloring base shows the assortment of textiles as image carriers, that are individually branded through optical features like fluorescence or retroflection. These are often colored with transparent lack - a reverse of the functions of color base and pigment. Painting occurs in a laboratory similar situation, in which the through light charged textile functions as a test terrain. Contrasting the paintings with lack on textile, the other part of Lergon’s subject matter of light metaphorically charged materials is formed by pulverized metals, painted directly on the solid walls. Thereby, a different, not through lightmodulation, but through mass and graining designated disturbance is created on the surface.

The term Albedo (title of a priory held solo exhibition) can function as a synonym of a comprehension of his works as well as for the concept of vantage points: It describes the measure of the reflection fortune of a body.

Opening Thursday, November 11th, 2010, 6 to 9 pm

Galerie Traversee
Theresienstrasse 56 b, Munich
Hours: Tue-Fri 11-19, Sat 11-17
Free admission

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